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In the Name of God بسم الله

For Zionists, critcizing Israel=antisemitism

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  • Advanced Member
Posted

http://www.theage.com.au/news/books/willin...5407952824.html

A Jewish writer demands to have his views heard, despite the charge of anti-Semitism. By Sarah Smiles.

At a wedding nearly two years ago, Antony Loewenstein was accosted by an enraged relative in the men's toilets.

"He started saying that my work is a disgrace, it's offensive and it's causing anti-Semitism," recalls Loewenstein.

The ominous charge of anti-Semitism has dogged Loewenstein, who is a Jew, since he began critiquing Israel as a young journalist. An op-ed piece he wrote for The Sydney Morning Herald in 2003 - questioning what he described as Israel's blindness to the Palestinian's suffering under occupation - elicited endless hate mail.

Loewenstein has since been besmirched as a "self-hating Jew", a "traitor" and even compared to the Nazis' master of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels- tough charges for a good Jewish boy raised in Brighton whose own family had perished in Nazi gas chambers.

While the abuse has often been hard to stomach (Loewenstein received a death threat earlier this year) he has refused to accept that criticism of Israel should be instantly equated with anti-Semitism. He believes members of the Jewish community, ever mindful of the trauma of the Holocaust, wield the cry of anti-Semitism as a discursive weapon to silence dissent on the Jewish state.

He furthermore argues that an influential Zionist lobby in Australia uses its weight to intimidate journalists and politicians.

"There is a high price to be paid for politicians that speak out," says Loewenstein, arguing that those who have spoken in defence of Palestinians in the past have been routinely "hammered by the Israeli lobby".

His book documents his trip to the Occupied Territories last year, where he saw first hand "Israeli-only roads" and multiple checkpoints preventing the movement of Palestinians - checkpoints where Palestinian women had given birth having been refused crossing to hospitals. In Israel, he met a disillusioned couple living on a kibbutz; family members who declared vehement hatred for Palestinians; and left-wing Israeli journalists who questioned the sustainability of modern Zionism.

Loewenstein's book has already met with fierce opposition.

Michael Danby, federal MP for Melbourne Ports, dismissed it as "disgusting" before it was completed. "I don't seek to censor Mr Loewenstein, but ... the decision of Melboune University Press to pick a person like him - he's a total fringe player - to write a book on a serious topic," he told The Age.

"Why would you read something of someone who has such hateful views? . . I think most people are going to take my advice and ignore it. I don't think he will sell a copy."

Loewenstein considers such dislike of alternative views in the Jewish community as reflecting its desire to dominate the discourse on the Arab-Israeli conflict. "The definition of (editorial) balance by Zionist groups is that only our side is right and should be heard," he says.

While Loewenstein says debate on Israeli policies is de rigueur in Israel, he believes there is an unspoken law within the Jewish Diaspora community that Israel should not be criticised in public.

While he supports Israel's right to exist and a two-state solution for the Palestinians, he nonetheless rejects the concept of a Jewish state and policies that prevent non-Jews from achieving full rights of citizenship.

"If an Israeli marries a Palestinian from the Occupied Territories - they can't have the same rights of citizenship," says Loewenstein. "That's racism, pure and simple."

  • Advanced Member
Posted

(salam)

Yes, those are Orthodox Jews. Othodox jews are against Zionism. They believe ZIonism is the error. Zionism is making people believe that its judasim.

They say Zionism != Judasim which all of us agree.

Truth about Zionism

The real truth

  • 18 years later...

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